Reducing Your Cancer Risk

How much do daily habits like diet and exercise affect our risk for cancer? Much more than you might think. Increasingly, researchers agree that poor diets and sedentary lifestyles are among the most important contributors to cancer risk.

Fortunately, these are things we can control.

Except for quitting smoking, the best way to cut your risk of cancer is to achieve and maintain a healthy weight, to be physically active on a regular basis, and to make healthy food choices. The evidence for this is strong: Each year, about 580,000 Americans die of cancer; Want to start an exercise routine?

Control Your Weight

Maintaining a healthy weight is important to reduce the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes. Being overweight or obese increases the risk of several cancers, including cancers of the breast (among women past menopause), colon, endometrium, esophagus, kidney, and other organs.

Being overweight works in a variety of ways to increase cancer risk. One of the main ways is that excess weight causes the body to produce and circulate more of the hormones estrogen and insulin, which can stimulate cancer growth.

What's a Healthy Weight?

One of the best ways to find out if you are at a healthy weight is to check your Body Mass Index (BMI), a score based on the relationship between your height and weight. To reduce your cancer risk, try to keep your BMI less than 25.

If you are trying to control your weight, a good first step is to watch portion sizes, especially of foods high in calories, fat, and added sugars. Try writing down what and how much you eat and drink for a week and see where you can cut down on portion sizes, cut back on some not-so-healthy foods and drinks, or both!

Be More Active

Watching how much you eat will help you control your weight. The other key is to increase the amount of physical activity you do. Being active helps reduce your cancer risk by helping with weight control, and can also reduce your risk by influencing hormone levels and your immune system.

More good news – physical activity helps you reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes, too! So grab your tennis shoes and head out the door!

The latest recommendations for adults call for at least 30 minutes of intentional moderate to vigorous activity a day -- this is over and above usual daily activities like using the stairs instead of the elevator at your office or doing housework -- on 5 or more days per week. Even better, shoot for 45 to 60 minutes. For kids, the recommendation is 60 minutes or more a day.

Activities considered moderate are those that make you breathe as hard as you would during a brisk walk. This includes things like walking, biking, even housework and gardening. Vigorous activities generally engage large muscle groups and cause a noticeable increase in heart rate, breathing depth and frequency, and sweating.

Try walking. Join the BIDMC Walking Club and get a cool membership wrist band, tips and a FREE pedometer app to get you started.one-third of these deaths are linked to poor diet, physical inactivity, and carrying excess weight.